Discoverying Our Identity
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Introduction
Introduction
Good evening and welcome!
Tonight I have felt led by the Lord to talk to you about identity and specifically discovering our identity in Christ.
And I know that we may have people from all walks of life and all different church backgrounds, but one thing that we all have in common is we have an identity.
And what I mean by that is simply who are we?
Who do we identify as?
And let’s be clear, I’m not talking about all of this identity stuff that is floating around out there these days.
I’m talking about who do we identify as with regard to our mission in this life?
If you are a Christian—meaning if you have repented of your sins and are a follower of Jesus Christ, you have an identity.
In fact, Peter tells us that we are a . . .
But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
And Paul in Ephesians 2 :10 . . .
For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
And one more from 2 Corinthians 5:17 . . .
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
So, we see that in all of these we are set apart, separated, and made new by Christ for His use and His purposes.
However, and this is a big however, before we can ever come into that role, we must first identify with Christ.
We don’t just come into being and become an child of God.
Contrary to popular belief, everyone in this world is not God’s child.
Everyone in this world is God’s creation and God loves us all, but in order to be God’s child, part of God’s kingdom, we must first accept Jesus Christ as our Savior and then allow Him to be our Lord.
Ephesians 2 .. .
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.
We must first receive salvation before we can discover our purpose, our role, and our identity.
And when we do that we are ready to be used by God.
We are ready to conduct ourselves in the true meaning and purpose of revival.
And before I get into the passages for tonight, I really want to be clear on what revival is.
We have this notion that revival is when we invite all our friends and family to come to church to hear about Jesus and accept salvation so they don’t die and go to hell.
And we have this impression because that is that the Church has taught for generations.
That is false.
In fact, this whole notion of how we should hear the gospel and respond and then bring other people back to church with us so they can hear the gospel is false.
It is honestly, laziness.
Revival is so that the people of God can be renewed and revived so they can carry the gospel to the world.
Revival itself is not for the lost, Revival is for the saved so they can go to the lost.
Jesus never called us to be inviters to church.
Jesus called us to GO and make disciples.
With the key word being GO.
Go and do something, not push the responsibility on your preachers and teachers—how about you doing some preaching and teaching.
Instead of going up to someone and telling them “why don’t you come to church with me to hear so and so preach” ask them if they know this man named Jesus and share the gospel with them.
And revival is meant to equip you to do that.
But we think we are accomplishing something by just inviting people to come hear someone else, when you are standing right there equipped by the same Holy Spirit as the greatest evangelist you can think of.
So we really need to stop overthinking it and just do what God has called us to do.
But back to what we really need to talk about tonight, which is discovering our identity.
And I want to talk to you about this from the perspective of the life of Samuel who we learn about from the Old Testament.
Samuel was very instrumental in the early history of Israel but it all started with Samuel realizing and accepting what his true identity was.
So, I want to read some scripture to you from 1 Samuel 3 verses 1-11 and then we will get into things a little bit deeper.
1 Samuel 3, starting in verse 1 . . .
Scripture Focus
Scripture Focus
The boy Samuel ministered before the Lord under Eli. In those days the word of the Lord was rare; there were not many visions. One night Eli, whose eyes were becoming so weak that he could barely see, was lying down in his usual place. The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was. Then the Lord called Samuel. Samuel answered, “Here I am.” And he ran to Eli and said, “Here I am; you called me.” But Eli said, “I did not call; go back and lie down.” So he went and lay down. Again the Lord called, “Samuel!” And Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, “Here I am; you called me.” “My son,” Eli said, “I did not call; go back and lie down.” Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord: The word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. The Lord called Samuel a third time, and Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, “Here I am; you called me.” Then Eli realized that the Lord was calling the boy. So Eli told Samuel, “Go and lie down, and if he calls you, say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’ ” So Samuel went and lay down in his place. The Lord came and stood there, calling as at the other times, “Samuel! Samuel!” Then Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant is listening.” And the Lord said to Samuel: “See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make the ears of everyone who hears of it tingle.
The Calling
The Calling
Now I wanted to read that entire passage so we can get the context of what is going on here, but what I want us to pay special attention to is the end of the passage.
Again in verses 10-11:
The Lord came and stood there, calling as at the other times, “Samuel! Samuel!” Then Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant is listening.” And the Lord said to Samuel: “See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make the ears of everyone who hears of it tingle.
In no unequivocal terms God tells Samuel that HE AS IN GOD is about to do something in Israel and the end result is that it will be so great that everyone who hears it will be excited (their ears will tingle).
And the key things to focus on is #1 God is the one going to do the great thing, not Samuel, not Eli, not Israel.
And to put that in context for us, God has great things planned for His Church.
And He is going to do it.
Not preachers, not the teachers, not the denominations, not the individual churches.
Not you, not me, not any of us, but rather GOD is going to do it.
And we can be assured that what God plans to do, God will accomplish, with or without us.
However, God chooses to use us and chooses to involve us.
But whether we choose to be involved is a different story.
We have to choose to listen to and respond to God’s voice.
First, though we have to be able to recognize God’s voice.
Look at what happened here again.
The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was. Then the Lord called Samuel. Samuel answered, “Here I am.” And he ran to Eli and said, “Here I am; you called me.” But Eli said, “I did not call; go back and lie down.” So he went and lay down. Again the Lord called, “Samuel!” And Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, “Here I am; you called me.” “My son,” Eli said, “I did not call; go back and lie down.”
God called but Samuel did not recognize God’s voice.
Samuel thought it was the voice of his mentor calling him and responded.
Of course Eli said it wasn’t him and told Samuel to go back and lay down.
Then it all happened again and they repeated the pattern.
After the third time of this Eli realized what was happening and tells Samuel
So Eli told Samuel, “Go and lie down, and if he calls you, say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’ ” So Samuel went and lay down in his place. The Lord came and stood there, calling as at the other times, “Samuel! Samuel!” Then Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”
So we see that now Samuel has prepared himself to receive from God.
Samuel had made the proper preparation in his own heart to receive God’s message and God’s instruction for him and his own life.
How many of us in here have truly prepared our hearts to receive God’s message?
Not my message or any other preacher’s message but God’s message and God’s calling?
How many of us have prostrated ourselves and are listening for God to speak?
And this is hard sometimes because sometimes we confuse the voice of man for the voice of God.
We hear the latest trend or the latest ebb and flow of the Church and think that is the voice of God speaking, when it may not be.
And what we are hearing may not be bad, but it also may not be what God has for us.
See what God has for me to do is not the same as what God has for you to do.
What God has for one church is not the same as what God has for another church.
The mission (going and making disciples) is the same but how that is gone about is different for every person and every congregation.
We can’t copy the ministry God has given another person or another church because we see it working and think it is going to work for us because it works for them.
It is meant for them not for us.
We have to realize our own identity in Christ and step into that identity, not someone else’s.
And in fact, that goes right into the second point I want to talk about—what happens when we fail to recognize God’s voice.
The Consequence
The Consequence
We know from what we just read that God has big plans for Israel.
And the plan was for them to be a nation ruled by God and not by man.
From the beginning of Israel up to this point, they had had no king and had a series of judges and prophets to lead them in the direction God wanted them to go in.
However, there came a time when Israel did not want to follow this pattern.
1 Samuel 8 starts outs . . .
When Samuel grew old, he appointed his sons as judges for Israel. The name of his firstborn was Joel and the name of his second was Abijah, and they served at Beersheba. But his sons did not walk in his ways. They turned aside after dishonest gain and accepted bribes and perverted justice.
Now this is interesting to say the least.
Samuel is getting old and is looking for someone to be his successor, so he appoints his sons as the next judges.
However, we can find nowhere in Scripture of where this is what God told Samuel to do.
If we go back and study 1 Samuel 3-7, which we don’t have time to tonight we will find that Eli had planned to appoint his two sons to succeed him, but God had already told Samuel that this would not be the case.
And the reason was because his sons were wicked and overcome in sin and not fit for the position.
And what made matters worse was that Eli knew and didn’t do anything about it.
So, God raised Samuel up to be the next judge but before that happened we read of the death of both of Eli’s sons in battle and the capture of the Ark by the Philistines.
When this news got to Eli, he fell back in his chair and broke his neck and died himself.
It also goes on to talk about Eli’s son Phinease’s wife giving birth to a son after hearing the news, dying during delivery but on her dying breath naming the child Ichabod meaning . . .
She said, “The glory has departed from Israel, for the ark of God has been captured.”
And it is at this point when Samuel becomes the next judge/leader in Israel and things start to improve because Samuel is following God.
However, as we have read Samuel is growing old and knows that it will be time to appoint new judges over Israel and he appoints his two sons.
But again the problem here is that . . .
But his sons did not walk in his ways. They turned aside after dishonest gain and accepted bribes and perverted justice.
So, his sons were falling right back into the same behaviors as Eli’s sons and it’s obvious that this was not God’s plan for them.
And what is also obvious is that Samuel had forgotten rule #1, seek God’s word and God’s voice.
See, Samuel had gotten sucked into that idea of tradition.
The idea that we are going to just do things the way we always have because that’s what we have always done.
He was doing this and responding to this as just an automatic response to what they have always done instead of slowing down and listening to God’s voice and responding to God’s movement and not our own.
And as well intentioned as we are we cannot manufacture a move of God by being busy.
There comes a time in the life of every church that we have to decide whether or not we are doing what we are doing as a response to a clear call of God to do it, or because we’ve always done it.
We have to step back and evaluate it.
For instance, almost all our churches do a VBS every year, but is that because God is telling us to or or because we have always done it?
What if God wants several of us to combine efforts and have a community event instead?
And hear me, I’m not saying we are supposed to that, just using that as an example.
The point is—don’t plan and schedule just because we think we have to because we always have or because we think it is a good idea.
Slow down and hear God’s voice in everything we do.
Be intentional about God’s will and not our own good intentions.
I heard a preacher but it this way—we need to be filled and fruitful and not just busy.
Samuel had good intentions on appointing his sons’ but that was not God’s will.
And Israel, (ie the Church) recognized that their leader was making a wrong move so they intervened.
So all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah. They said to him, “You are old, and your sons do not walk in your ways; now appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have.”
They recognized that he was going in the wrong direction and did not want things to go back to the days of Eli’s sons, but they made the same mistake that Samuel made.
Instead of seeking God and hearing God’s voice, they decided that they wanted to be just like everyone else in the world.
They wanted to be seen as legitimate and relevant so they decided in themselves that in order to do this they needed to establish themselves as a kingdom with a king and be just like everyone else.
But when they said this Samuel’s discernment kicked in and now look at what he does . . .
But when they said, “Give us a king to lead us,” this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the Lord.
He prayed to the Lord.
He sought the Lord.
He didn’t make a snap judgment or rush headlong into the “king” search.
He slowed down, remembered who he was in God and what God had called him to and he prayed.
And this was the Lord’s answer . . .
And the Lord told him: “Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will do.” Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king.
And it gets worse . . .
He said, “This is what the king who will reign over you will do: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. Your menservants and maidservants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the Lord will not answer you in that day.”
Even after all of this and all of the downsides of being just like everyone else . . .
But the people refused to listen to Samuel. “No!” they said. “We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles.” When Samuel heard all that the people said, he repeated it before the Lord.
Point being, they were so drawn to hearing their own voices and doing what was right in their own eyes, they failed to see how God was trying to protect and provide for them and demanded the king.
Altar/Challenge
Altar/Challenge
And honestly we have a tendency to do the exact same thing.
We see all the great things that this church or that church is doing and we want to be just like them.
They have this program and we have to copy it.
They have that program and we have to adapt it to make it our own.
All the while we are failing to seek the Lord and what the Lord wants for us as people and us as churches.
And we ignore God’s warning and God’s protection, so God says give them what they want and let the chips fall where they may.
We need to remember that just because God permits something doesn’t mean God blesses it.
God calls us each to find our identity in Him and walk in that identity.
As individuals and as churches.
And the first identity is—Is Jesus our Savior?
That has to come first and when you have established that, is He your Lord?
Do you hear and respond to His voice?
Or are you responding to what you think is a good idea or what has worked in the past?
Listen to what the Lord says . . .
This is what the Lord says— he who made a way through the sea, a path through the mighty waters, who drew out the chariots and horses, the army and reinforcements together, and they lay there, never to rise again, extinguished, snuffed out like a wick: “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.
The past is over with and we need to be moving in the present.
What is God doing today, not yesterday?
Yesterday’s good revival services are over.
The good ole’ days are done for.
It is today and we need to be walking in today.
And we need to hear His voice over all others.
My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.
#1 Are you His sheep?
#2 Do you hear His voice?
Only you know the answer and only you can do something about it.